


What is in front of you, what is ahead

by MadHatter13



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Gen, Sam Vimes doubts his qualifications as a dad, The People's Revolution of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May, first appearance of 'Where is my cow?'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6969466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadHatter13/pseuds/MadHatter13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few months after that memorable 25th, they rebuild Treacle Mine Road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What is in front of you, what is ahead

From the site of what had once been the Treacle Mine Road Watch House,* there came the sound of hammering.

* _Pre-dragon_.

Also sawing, the wrangling of stone, and the occasional shouting as someone got their thumb caught beneath something heavy. You need more than just a hammer to build a home, or for that matter, a police station.

They had been lucky to discover that the foundations were still there, almost untouched, as they probably had been when they were the second storey of the old lemonade factory. The geography of Ankh-Morpork was permeable throughout, but architecture around the old treacle mines were rather more solid. This meant that replacing the old stone walls with new blocks of granite was not particularly hard, and since some clerk at the Patrician‘s Palace had found the old blueprints to when the station was first built, they even knew the right places to put them.

Of course, not _everything_ could go perfectly.

                ‘Listen. _Listen._ There _was_ a back-doorway next to the broom closet, right _here_.’

                The building supervisor, a heavyset man with a cap that he periodically removed to wipe his forehead with a stained chequered handkerchief, folded his arms stolidly. ‘Doesn’t say anything about that in the blueprints.’

                ‘So? When has any construction effort in this city _ever_ gone exactly to plan? I should know, I worked here for almost thirty years!’

                Sergeant Colon, who had up until then been smoking a quiet rollup against the wall helpfully telling the workers when they did something wrong, strolled over. ‘He’s right, you know. Only door Nobby would use to enter the place, on account of how his ol’ mate Vinny lived across the street and he didn’t want to use the front door.’

                Vimes threw his handsd up. ‘ _Thank_ you!’

                The builder, however, chose to focus on something else, a frown stealing across his face. ‘But if they were friends, why didn’t he want to be seen-’

                Fred Colon nodded. ‘Well, it’s a long story, involving a lot of shrimp –‘

                ‘Leave it for later,’ Vimes said. ‘You heard the man. Door goes there, and in any case, how else would anyone get into the back yard, where we used to keep the rabbits?’

                ‘Cor, you sure have a good memory, Sam,’ said Colon. ‘I’d plain forgot about them, and it’s only been a few years.’

                Vimes bit back the urge to say, _Because I was there just a few months ago_. Instead he said, ‘Just sort this out, alright?’ And walked off, knowing he probably looked petulant. He lit a cigar to cover it up, and walked out into the street.

                It had all happened so _fast_. One moment the dwarves that used to live in the cellars had been hanging on to the site with the grim determination of the true basement-dweller, and a moment after _that_ they’d very nearly bowed and scraped their thanks after a sizable sum was offered from the coffers of the city itself. And then dozens of people had turned up to rebuild Treacle Mine Road, and each and every one of them thought _they_ had the right idea of how it ought to be done, even if they had never stepped foot into the place while it was still standing.

                If Vimes had the time, and the know-how, he’d kick the boiling lot of them out and build the damn place himself. But he had neither, even if he could hold a hammer the right way around to make the various roofs, railings and shrubberies a lot more dangerous to any unwanted visitors once the construction crew had finished with the actual building. And so he just argued a lot, even though he could concede in his own mind that occasionally they might have a point.

                ‘Mornin’, Commander,’ said a voice, distracting him from his own contrite thoughts.

                ‘Hm? Oh, hey, Sidney.’ Sidney Lopsides, the beggar’s peculiarly sideways face for once not hidden with a sack* nodded companionably at him, as far as Vimes was able to tell.

* _It being his day off – the city only paid him to wear it seven out of eight days of the week._

‘See you’re bringing back the old place, sor.’

                ‘Uh, yeah...’ It was very hard to keep up a conversation with Sidney while looking at him at the same time. Vimes kept getting the urge to tilt his head a full hundred degrees.

                ‘That brings back memories, so it does,’ said the beggar. ‘I remember spending a little time in the cells, ‘specially back when they had curfew. Or just ‘cause I forgot to wear my sack, o’course.’ There was an uncharacteristic bit of nostalgia in his voice, if not on his face. ‘That takes me back, and so it does. Usually it was Corporal Curry on prison duty. Decent man, didn’t kick pris’ners much. Sad to see him go so soon.’

                Vimes nodded, not knowing what to say. Curry had lasted a whole decade after the revolution, largely by staying indoors and not going on patrol. In the end, he was hit on the head by a freak shower of armadillos, but he and Gaskin had fudged the paperwork a bit to make it look as if he was on duty so his kids would get the pension. The Widow’s and Orphan’s fund hadn’t even been a distant dream in those days.

                Sidney, however, was still on a stroll down memory lane. ‘D’ya think they could get the smell back? In them cellars I mean. Like fermented rats and bad tea and rust.’

                Vimes made a face. ‘We can only hope, Sidney. See you around, eh?’ He tossed him a coin for his troubles, and the beggar nodded, satisfied, before sidling across the street to follow a man until he was paid not to.

                He strolled down the street, towards Scoone Avenue. By all rights, it was his a day off, today, although Carrot insisted he should actually be away on ‘parental leave,’ something Vimes hadn’t even heard of until that point. In the murky recollection of his memories the only basis for comparison had been when he was a lad and Iffy Scurrick’s sister had been fired from her position as a maid after getting pregnant, despite the fact that the lad she’d been seeing had scarpered as soon as he heard the news and there wasn’t anyone to put food on the table. She’d moved in with them for a while, since her mother wouldn’t speak to her, until Vimes’s own mother had gone and talked some sense into her.

                The idea of actually having time to spend with his wife and his son was a novel one, but today Sybil had taken the baby off to visit a friend from the Friendly Flamethrowers’ League. She hadn’t said anything about it, but Vimes knew she was getting tired of having to stay home, even though they’d gotten a nursemaid to help out. So he’d gone somewhere else to prevent himself from feeling useless, a feeling that had tended to lurk long before his son had even been born. After all, it seemed everyone else had a role to fulfil, whether at home or in the Watch, and in a way so did he, but he wasn’t at all certain he was qualified for at least one of those.

                He bumped into a pedestrian, who opened his mouth to say something expletive-filled, but saw the armour and the badge and closed it again. Vimes’s feet were doing the work for him at this point, and took him through the crowded streets without interfering with his brain.

                Be honest, he thought. What do you know about being a father? Yours never stuck around to teach you the ropes, although probably you were luckier than if he had. And it hadn’t seemed too hard when young Sam had more or less the communicative abilities of a tulip, albeit with more screaming,* but these days he seemed a lot more focused and more like... a person, in progress. Who wasn’t to say he would do a horrible job of it, like he had with most of his personal life, barring the last few years?

* _Although the Shouting Violets of Bes Pelagic were known to yell at passers by until they gave in and watered them out of annoyance._

He reached Scoone Avenue, and had barely gone through the gate when Sybil had swept up to him and popped young Sam in his arms, hurriedly putting on her flame-retardant gear. ‘Hold him, Sam. Dame Genevieve Margory Trello the fifth has an extremely bad case of the cloggies and I need to make sure she doesn’t panic the rest of them into an early explosion.’ All this was said with the kind of voice that would have made a regiment get up and salute, which was what Vimes very nearly did, but remembered in time not to do so with an infant in his hands. Then she was off to the kennels, which were emitting a distressing whistling sound. He looked at the happily burbling baby in his arms, and then at the rapidly retreating back of Sybil. There was a small explosion in the distance.

                ‘I think we better go in, unless we want to end up as a short roasted kebab.’

                He walked up the steps and through the front door, where Willikins was waiting with a look of butlery resignation on his face. ‘I already alerted the bootboy and a few others to have a bucket chain ready in case of any mishaps,’ he said to Vimes.

                ‘Good idea. Might want to get out the burn salve as well.’ Vimes had long since decided not to interfere with his wife’s hobby, or try to dissuade her from the more dangerous bits,* on the basis that he wasn’t even remotely qualified to do so and in any case it wouldn’t work.** ‘I’ll go upstairs with young Sam.’

* _I.e. all of them._

* _That wasn’t even going into the hilarious hypocrisy of him of all people telling anyone to give up a dangerous job._

Willikins’ eyebrows rose a mere sixteenth of an inch. ‘Are you sure you would not prefer I or Unity to take care of the child, sir?’

                ‘Hm? No, why?’

                The butler avoided the answer. ‘Then I will go and see to the excitement outside, sir.’

                Vimes stared after the retreating back of the butler, then headed in the opposite direction, climbing the stairs to the nursery and its strangely monochrome interior. The glassy-eyed toys always unnerved him a bit, especially the rocking horse with the enormous teeth, although young Sam wouldn’t be old enough to use that one for a while yet.

                He was just about to admit to his own bafflement on what to do next when young Sam started to cry: The air-siren wail of an infant getting into a really good performance that would probably bring the house down and include several encores. He tried rocking his son, even though he knew by now, after a few months worth of waking up in the middle of the night to put him to sleep again, that the chance of curbing a cry like that before young Sam simply cried himself into exhaustion was only one chance out of five. He looked about desperately for something to distract the child that _didn’t_ have terrifying glassy eyes or too many wooden teeth, and his gaze fell on the bookshelf.

                He’d questioned putting together a personal library for a baby less than half a year old, but Sybil had been adamant. She’d loved to listen to people reading to her when she was little, she said, even before she could read. And she and the ladies she tended the kennels with were all definite on Books being Important for Development.

                Grabbing one randomly off the shelf, Vimes went over to an armchair so stuffed it looked as if it might already have claimed several occupants, and sat down with his still-wailing son.

                He peered at the title of the cardboard-paged novelette. ‘’Where Is My Cow?’’ He read. ‘Ye gods...’

                He opened the book and began to read, out of self-defence as much as thinking it might do any good. Talking tended to help calm young Sam down, but usually he just didn’t know what to say. He’d never been good at words that weren’t orders, or arguments, or shouting.* At least this way he didn’t have to use his imagination.

* _Or, as Captain Angua had remarked on one memorable occasion on their journey to Borogravia, when everyone had been dead tired and frustrated to boot after hours on broomsticks, ‘Bitching, sir. And believe me, I know what I’m talking about.’_

                But amazingly, once he had reached the page starring the much-anticipated cow, young Sam had quietened down, and was watching the pages with all the mesmerisation an infant could muster. He reached for the pages, cooing and grasping at the brightly coloured cardboard. Vimes found some of the tension in his body drain away. ‘And I suppose if I stop talking we’re in for another show, huh?’

                Young Sam ignored him, and instead investigated the new object the same way he did everything; by putting it in his mouth.

                ‘I’ll just take that as a ‘yes’. Ye gods, if your grandmother could have see you. She would have been on top of the world, you know, never got to have grandkids. Never gave me grief about it, although that may just have been because she had more common sense than me. The Vimes family tree was never very big.’ Vimes stared, unseeing, down at the pages. ‘Of course, _you_ ’ll have both parents sticking around, and Fred and Nobby already adore you. So does Carrot, even if he isn’t nearly as good with children as he thinks he is. I suppose Angua will be more interested* once you’re walking around and pulling her fur out. And I imagine you could climb all over Detritus without him minding it one bit.’

* _Or, rather, less at a loss what to do with what she described as ‘a concentric odour cloud.’**_

_**While Cheery, on the other hand, had already in a fit of excitement gotten her hands on a ‘baby’s first beard’ kit._

Young Sam blew a snot bubble. The older version was silent for a moment. Then, ‘You know, I wonder if they think I’ll be as bad at it as I do. Willikins might just be a traditionalist,* but at least he knows how to change a diaper. I’m not home as much as I should be. And thing is, I promised that I would, before you were born.’ He half-laughed. ‘Hah, long, _long_ before you were born, if you think of it one way.’

* _Of the opinion that the upper classes should let servants to the task of raising their children, since they at least had practice at it, although he had long resigned himself to a more modern approach from Lady Sybil, in most things._

                He had told Sybil, of course, about his brief fall back through time. How wouldn’t she have  question her husband coming back with a fresh scar, not to mention later stories of him falling naked through the dome of the University Library. Well, he hadn’t told her _right_ away, because at first she was still sick after giving birth to young Sam, and then he was just so incandescently relieved to have made it back and that both of them were okay, and _then_ there had been such a lot to do about, well, everything. But he told her, because even though he wasn’t good at most words, with Sybil he made an effort. She’d taken it with the kind of straight-forwardness he’d come to know – he said it had happened, so it had, and he’d made it back in one piece, which was good. But she had also said, ‘Maybe it will never fade, nor should it, but the next anniversary of the revolution will also be the first birthday of your son. And that will also be worth celebrating.’

                And that was part of why he wanted them to get it _right_ down at Treacle Mine Road. Because he didn’t want it to fade, because for the longest time it was all he’d really had, and for very selfish reasons he wanted it back.

                But maybe it would never be completely the same. Sidney was right on that point – just because he was nostalgic for it didn’t mean it had been in any way perfect. And maybe that change wasn’t bad – in fact, maybe that was better, in every way possible.

                Lady Sybil found the two of them asleep in the nursery, once she’d finished putting out the remaining small fires in her clothing, and quarantined the more excitable dragons somewhere where they wouldn’t cause* property damage. And she smiled, even if it meant that young Sam might be up half the night later on, and told Willikins to relay a message to Pseudopolis Yard that the Commander would be late on shift tonight. He had an important job to attend to.

_*Extensive_.

* * *

 

Four months after that, Sam Vimes stood in the doorway to Treacle Mine Road Watch House, with his wife and his son, and lit the blue lamp over the door. The new-old building wasn’t completely identical to its ancestor, but as a clever dwarf had once told him, the axe of your grandfather is still your axe. The cells were considerably better built, and less inclined to draw rats, especially considering the fact that the new prison guard on duty was from the mines in Copperhead. The whole building would still smell largely of new timber for some time, and they’d installed the most recent clacks model on the roof.

                But there was, still, a window over the privy roof that opened if you hit it just right, and the old lemonade factory, which was being turned into the new training school, and the blue lamp over the door.

Home was an odd thing, and sometimes you lost it, or thought you did, and every bit about it became cause for yearning to go back, even that annoying extra step you always tripped over or the cupboards that would never close all the way. Not because it was perfect, but because it was _yours_.

                Treacle Mine Road had been all he had, really, for years. And a lot of it hadn’t been good, and often straight-up bad, and gradually there had only been him, and Nobby, and Fred. And then... Well. Things had got better. In every possible way.

                And that was where he was now. And that was what was in front of him.


End file.
